


Rescue Mission

by ReptileRuler



Series: PRaZ FebuWhump [8]
Category: Invader Zim
Genre: ((lowkey kind of)), Action/Adventure, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Lard Nar (mentioned), Non-Consensual Drug Use, The Resisty, Zim being Zim, damsel in distress themes, unconscioussness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 00:08:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29287323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReptileRuler/pseuds/ReptileRuler
Summary: Zim had left earth the second he heard of the kidnapping of his Tallest by the Resisty.Febuwhump 2021 DAY 8: “Hey, hey! This is no time to sleep!”
Series: PRaZ FebuWhump [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2137614
Comments: 4
Kudos: 23
Collections: febuwhump 2021





	Rescue Mission

**Author's Note:**

> May not actually fit into the "whump" theme. I tried lol. It was still fun to write and I like this one!

Zim crashed into the Resisty mothership with little concern regarding the safety of himself or the vile aliens inside. 

(His beloved Tallest were in there too, but in the heat of the moment, that fact was lost to him.)

Lard Nar screamed, clearly unprepared for such an  _ ingenious  _ move on Zim’s part! Behind him, the spare glass raised up, preventing most rebels from getting sucked into the void of space. Unfortunate. But! Zim was now inside! With his glorious VOOT!

He cackled and fired. Below him, the inferior life forms jumped out of the way. He thought he could see Lard Nar shouting at him, as though he had anything to say to that awful Vortian. He turned his ship and fired towards the rebel leader. Lard Nar jumped out of the way, and made a ‘retreat’ sign to his men. 

“No you don’t!” Zim hissed and activated his engines. Or, one engine. Seems the right one got damaged when he crashed. No matter! He could still kill everyone in here!

The VOOT groaned with the effort to turn. By the time it had turned to the doorway, the Resisty was nowhere to be seen.

“RRGH! Damn it!”

Zim slammed open the hatch and jumped out on his PAK legs. He intended to chase them down, but froze in his tracks.

A corridor signalled to him. It was dark, and he swore he could feel a cold breeze coming from it. The prison area. Suddenly he remembered.

Zim hadn’t come all this way to kill the Resisty! This was a rescue mission! He’d left earth the second he heard of the kidnapping of his Tallest by the Resisty!

He gasped at the realization, and hurried down the dark hallway. 

Echoes of his PAK legs clicking against the metal floor accompanied him as he ran. Only one prison door had been locked, and he skidded to a stop and transformed one leg into a laser.

The door melted into nothingness and revealed… darkness. What, couldn’t the Resisty afford enough energy to keep their own ship lit?! What a gang of morons they were!

Zim stepped inside. Two figures lay curled up on the other side of the room.

“My Tallest!” Zim grinned and rushed forward, “I have come to rescue you! Me, Zim! You missed it, but I just DEFEATED the Resisty! Yup, single-handedly! I did it all on my own, for I am Zi-”

He paused. They hadn’t moved as much as an antennae. In fact, even their PAKs were dimmer than usual, and they both lay limply on the ground.

“My Tallest! Hey!”

He reached forward and shook Purple’s shoulder. Nothing. 

“Hey, hey! My Tallest! This is no time to sleep!”

At first, Zim was impatient. Then, worry started to creep through his guts. Had Lard Nar done something to them? Found a way to place them in a permanent coma as he and his rebels ravaged the Irken empire?!

“My Tallest! Wake up!” Zim yelled, because he always tried to solve his problems by yelling. It didn’t work this time. He tried again “MY! TALLEST!”

Somewhere, something clunked. The ship groaned worryingly. Zim remembered that he’d crashed full force into the mothership, and that it might be damaged and about to blow up. He could have put himself and his leaders in mortal danger.

“... Oops.”

Luckily, Zim never wasted any time lamenting his poor life choices! He always looked for opportunities, of which there were always many, because he was Zim and he could do anything and he always succeeded. 

Now, he had to get his unconscious Tallest to his VOOT cruiser, fix the broken engine, and get the hell out of here before they died. Or Lard Nar and his stinky crew returned. 

Okay. First things first. Zim was roughly a third the size of the Tallest. He had to carry the two of them, since they weren’t waking up when he yelled at them.

“Sirs. This will be sliiightly uncomfortable, I’m afraid”, he mumbled, frowning. He grabbed Purple around the waist and tried not to think about how lifeless he was. A different thought arose in Zim’s soup of a mind. He checked if they were even breathing. They were. Okay.

He heaved Purple over one shoulder. The only reason he could even hold onto him with one arm was because of the Tallest skinny waist, further slimmed down by his corset. Purple’s face remained pressed to the ground, and his knees bent against the floor behind Zim.

With some skillsome maneuvering, he managed to heave Red over his other shoulder. He unleashed his PAK legs once again, ignoring the dangerous creaking they gave off at the extra weight.

“... Good!” He exclaimed when he didn’t immediately fall to the ground. “Excellent! Now we just need to get back to the VOOT! Yes!”

He stumbled his way through the corridors. The Tallest were still total dead-weight, but he shoved that dread into a mental box, sealed it, and threw it into a mental version of the acid oceans on earth. One thing at a time. He was Zim! He could do this. 

The VOOT stood waiting for him, its hatch still open. He stumbled in and dumped the Tallest on the floor behind his seat. He closed the health and turned on the engines, remembered the broken right one, and cursed as he re-opened the hatch and jumped out. 

Someone else might call the repairs sloppy. They would be wrong, of course! Zim always did immaculate work! Even in this situation, when he had to work fast, he fixed burnt wires and straightened out buckles with nothing but the most precision-filled violence. 

When he was sure that his work would keep the engine intact for at least as long as it took to reach earth, he finally,  _ finally,  _ departed.

The darkness of space engulfed them. The Resisty mothership grew smaller as they drifted away. Zim only wasted a second watching it, before he turned around in his seat to take a look at his passengers.

The VOOT was not designed for more than one passenger. While Zim could stand and walk around on the space behind the chair, and even lay down with his arms and legs stretched out without touching the walls, it was still way too cramped for two Tallest to rest in the space.

They were just a pile. Tangled limbs awkwardly positioned spines. Limp antennae. Zim had once been in a battle on the surface of planet Dooq, with an unprecedented body count. He’d seen piles of Irken soldiers, thrown haphazardly into one spot for easy incineration. This reminded him of that. 

He shook his head. Climbing out of his seat, he set out to position them a little more comfortably. He placed them on their sides, pulling their knees up, placing their hands under their heads like pillows. Now it looked like two Irkens in what humans called the ‘fetal position’. Or maybe, since they were two, this would be more like the ‘spooning position’, with Purple almost wrapped around Red’s back. 

“Computer. Scan the Tallest and tell me what is wrong with them”, Zim said, frowning. There was a tiny bit of open space in front of Red, between his knees and chin. Zim squeezed himself into it. His one side pressed against the back of the passenger seat and his other against Red’s abdomen, but it was fine. 

“Scanning…”

Zim’s hand reached up and touched Red’s cheek. The muscles were slack underneath his grip. He rubbed a thumb against the skin. This was illegal, probably, but Zim was too anxious to care, and laws didn’t apply to someone as great as him, anyway. 

“Scanning complete. The Tallest are being kept sedated by a substance administered by their PAKs.”

“SEDATED?! PAKs?! But how?” his head snapped up towards the Computer’s voice.

“The enemy must have done it, I dunno.” The suggestion of a shrug existed in the tone of the Computer’s voice.

“Well, _ undo _ it!” 

“I… I don’t think I can? I don’t have clearance to intervene with the Almighty Tallest’s PAKs.”

“THIS IS AN EMERGENCY!”

Even though Zim screamed at the top of his lungs, Red’s antennae didn’t so much as twitch. It was starting to freak Zim out. 

“I am your Master! And I’m  _ ordering  _ you to undo the sedation administration thing!  _ Now or I dismantle you on the spot!”  _

“... Okaaay, I’ll try.”

Two wires snaked up from the dashboard (the ship designed slightly differently from his house, and the Computer’s limited reach stored in the main control center). They connected to Red and Purple’s PAKs, and something started humming. 

Zim waited. Nothing happened. He fidgeted, looking at the still forms.

“Not to worry, my Tallest”, he mumbled, doubting that they could hear, “Zim will fix this! And I shall take you back to the Massive, and then we can hunt down those filthy rebels together!”

He touched Red’s cheek again. Was that a twitch of muscle, or just Zim’s imagination?

“Almost there…” his Computer mumbled. 

They wouldn’t like it if they woke up to him touching them. Or, wait, why wouldn’t they? He’d saved them, and they loved him! They’d given him a special Invader mission that no one else could do! Emboldened, Zim stayed put, thinking that he surely saw Purple stir ever so slightly.

“... It is done.” The wires retreated. “If I get in trouble for that, I’m blaming you, by the way.”

“Uh-huh, that’s great”, Zim muttered, distracted by trying to find the next twitch the Tallest would make, “Hey, why aren’t they awake already?”

“The Tallest will wake up when the sedatives are out of their system. I am not a miracle worker, I just stopped their PAKs from administering any more.”

“Oh.”

The ship grew quiet. Zim grew bored of staring at their sleeping forms, but he could not bring himself to move to the driver’s seat. Every time they moved, he tensed up, expecting them to wake up. 

The crowded VOOT cruiser drifted through deep space (coordinates set to earth, because Zim hadn’t thought to change them to Irk, and immediately forgotten about it) in silence. Zim started humming a little tune without thinking, just to get his mind off of stuff.

When one of Red’s eyes finally (finally!) opened, Zim was so overjoyed that he almost started bouncing on the spot.

“My Tallest! My Tallest, you’re awake!” He couldn’t help his wide smile, nor how he leaned forward and  _ certainly  _ too close to his leader’s face.

A sliver of red peered up at him. Red’s eyebrows were furrowed.

“Whuh…? Zim?”

“Yes, my Tallest! I rescued you from the Resisty!” he explained, “It was funny - they hid remarkably close to earth, as though they did not expect any Irken to be there! The fools! Clearly they did not know of Zim’s mission.”

He grinned smugly. The Tallest had been wise to keep his mission secret. Lard Nar hadn’t seen him coming. Not until he crashed into their windshield! 

Red made a move as though he wanted to roll onto his back, but his PAK clunked against the metal floor of the VOOT, so he settled with turning his face upward to stare at the ceiling. Zim had never seen him so… lethargic before. It made a familiar sense of protectiveness rise up from within. The same feeling he had when GIR got scared from a movie he watched and ended up hiding beneath Zim’s uniform shirt all night. 

“Where’re we…?” Red mumbled, still slurring.

“Oh, this is my VOOT. We are en-route to the Massive right now, sir”, Zim said.

“We’re actually en-route to earth, master”, his Computer chimed in. Zim frowned and elected to ignore that. He wanted to go to the Massive, so they  _ were  _ going to the Massive!

“On…  _ your  _ VOOT cruiser? You saved us, Zim?” Red looked back at him.

“That’s right”, he nodded eagerly. Then he perked up when Purple moaned.

“Mmmn. Be quiet”, he said. Purple’s hand moved and slapped Red in the face. Where Red seemed to have fought to wake up, his co-ruler appeared happy to will himself back to sleep.

“Uh-huh”, Red frowned, not bothering to move Purple’s palm away from his forehead. “I guess… it could be worse.”


End file.
